BOOK THE SECOND.
“The Five Gables” is not much the worse for the wear and tear of fifteen summers and winters. It still stands an irregular shape on the high bluff looking down on its humbler neighbors as if proud of its ugly magnificence. But if the mansion has not changed, can the same be said of the dwellers therein? Let us see. No one will forbid us walking up the steps of the porch, and entering the low window which leads into what seems to be a study and library in one. A man sits at an open desk busily engaged in writing. His black hair is plentifully streaked with grey. His face, although not old, has deep lines graven upon it which ought not to be seen on any but one bowed down with a weight of sin. His eyes are peculiarly sad, and have a hunted look, strange in its intensity, as he looks up from his writing to welcome a tall, fair woman, who opens the door and comes swiftly to his side, laying a white hand on his shoulder. “Still pouring over those old law papers, Andrew?” she said, playfully placing her other hand over the closely written sheets of foolscap. “Why you are making an old man of yourself, working so persistently, you spend the greater part of your time in this musty old study. Every night you have a repast served to you here, and I am sure there are times when you do not retire until the wee small hours. Why do you toil so laboriously? Surely we have an abundance of riches, more than we can ever use. Then why not take a little recreation occasionally? I scarcely see you except at meal hours, and very often those too are spent by you here.”
Andrew turned his head and pressed his lips to thehand still resting on his shoulder. “Have I been so lacking in husbandly care, that you are forced to complain of being neglected, my dear wife? Forgive me, sweet one. Come in front of me that I may see your face. Ah, there is a little frown upon it which must be charmed away.” He rose and pressed an arm around her, playfully tapping the tiny wrinkles on her forehead. She laughed and pointed to the papers. “But you are evading my question, Andrew. Is it necessary that you should dig and delve amongst these musty old things the greater part of your time?”
“Highly necessary, my sweet wife, or I should not do it, rest assured of that; but I hope to be soon through.”
“Ah, but you said that seven years ago. I don’t see as you are any nearer through than then. Many people have remarked to me of your altered appearance. Mrs. Bradley said yesterday, that you look like a man who has a secret grief. Is there anything troubling you, Andrew? If there is, can I know and share it with you?”
Andrew drew his wife’s head down upon his shoulder, so that she might not see the look of anguish which he knew was on his face. His lips trembled for a moment ere he replied, and he looked out of the window wistfully, longingly, as if he were trying to banish an evil spirit or conjure a protecting one. “What should trouble me, my sweetheart? Have I not the dearest wife in all the land, the mother of my cherub child? Mrs. Bradley is an old busy body, who delights in scenting mysteries. Tell her if she inquires after my health again, that I am losing my reason because of the fatality with which the number thirteen pursues me. That will set her into a new train of thought. I believe number thirteen is one of the hobbies she is riding at present.”
“Nonsense, Andrew, you are only fooling. You are too sensible to let anything so simple annoy you, but I am forgetting my errand. We have an invitation to a birthday fetê, and barbecue at Oakdale, the Parker’s country seat, you know. The festivities are to occupy three days, and they begin next week Tuesday. We can easily drive there in a day, by resting our horses. We can start Monday and return Friday.”
Again Andrew’s face clouded with that indescribable melancholy look. “I cannot go, dear one, but I willnot deprive you of what I know may be pleasure. Go, take Mary with you, and remain as long as you like.”
“There it is again, Andrew. You deprive yourself of all pleasure just because of these old law papers. I have a mind to come in here some time when you are out, and burn the whole business, only I can never gain an entrance when you are not here. One would think you had treasures untold stored here the way you guard this room. Why, Andrew, we have been married seven years and we have never even taken our wedding journey. You could never spare the time.”
Andrew stroked the little rings of hair from off his wife’s forehead, and kissed her with a remorseful look in his eyes which she did not see. “Do you chafe under this quiet home life, dear one? Would you like a change? If so take our child and visit England.”
“Not without you, Andrew. When I have been absent for only a day I can see how my absence annoys you. I can see with what joy I am welcomed home again, and Andrew, it is not my neighbor alone who has noticed the change in you. I, too, have watched this growing melancholy which shuts you so completely within yourself. Sometimes I have seen you clasp Mary to you with such fervor as to frighten the child, and your eyes look at her so strangely, as if you feared some harm might come to her.”
Andrew unloosed his clasp and strode nervously to the window, and stood for some time gazing out. What were his thoughts? Who but his God could know? Suddenly he turned and once again took his wife in his arms. “Victoria, have you ever regretted becoming my wife? Has there been at any time cause for regret on your part?”
“Never, Andrew. You have been all that a most tender, devoted husband could ever be. In fact when I have seen your anger displayed toward others, I have often wondered how it is that to me, who gives you ample provocation, you are so kind and tender.”
He placed his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes. “Do you still mourn for Roger? Are you satisfied with my love and devotion? Do you think that if he had lived he could have cared for you better than I?”
Victoria burst into tears. “You are cruel, Andrew.In this continual referring to a dead past which can never be recalled, you hurt me. Have I not told you that I can never love you with that freshness which I gave to Roger? Were you not at the time contented to take me with a bleeding heart, which since then God has mercifully healed by giving unto me my blessed Mary? Why, then, will you persist in opening this old wound?”
“Because I long for you to give me the same worshipping love which I lavish upon you, dear wife.”
Victoria shook her head. “That would be impossible, Andrew. Even Roger, though he loved me, did not give me the tender devotion which at all times you have done. I hardly think any woman of my acquaintance can say truthfully that in seven years of married life, they have never received a word of blame or censure from their husbands. I am proud that I can say it. Few women are blessed with such devotion as falls to my lot. No woman lives who could return it in like manner.”
Andrew clasped her closer. “You love me better than you did at first, Victoria?”
“Why should I not? To others you are cold and unapproachable. To me and Mary you are all tenderness and love. God bless you.”
Andrew shivered as if a cold wind had penetrated his being, and put his hand before his eyes. “Don’t, Victoria!” he said, in an unsteady tone. “Ask God to curse me. If there be a God, He surely will.”
“Andrew, husband, I beg of you to cease that scoffing tone which seems to be growing upon you. Say there is a God. Not ‘if there be a God.’ You know there is, or why are we permitted to live? Do not let Mary grow up with the knowledge of having an infidel father. For her sake, if not for mine, be like other people. Accompany us to church next Sabbath. You have never entered one since our marriage.”
“We will not argue this point, Victoria,” said Andrew, gently, but firmly. “I shall never enter any church while I am in this frame of mind. I am hypocrite enough without adding to my sin, God knows, if there is such a being.”
“What sin, Andrew! Why do you speak so wildly?”
Andrew tried to laugh. “Are we not all sinners,Victoria, in the sight of that God in whom you believe?”
“Ah, yes,” sighed Victoria. “We are, indeed, miserable sinners; but you frightened me when you spoke so wildly, and you give rise to very unpleasant comments by your morbid, unfriendly ways. Can I not coax you to think better of your hasty decision, and so attend this barbecue with me?”
“Ask anything of me but to absent myself from home, dear wife. That I cannot do.”
Victoria turned to leave the room. Andrew’s troubled eyes followed her. “You are not angry with me, Victoria?”
“No, it would be silly of me to become angry over so simple a thing, but I am puzzled at your strange manner, Andrew. I fear you are concealing something which I ought to know.”
Andrew sank into a chair as Victoria left the room, and as he laid his head upon the table a heavy groan came from his white, trembling lips. Now that he was alone all the gayety of manner assumed to deceive Victoria left him, and the wretched man writhed in agony of spirit, until the drops of moisture rolled from his face, and covered the manuscript lying upon the table with great unsightly blots. “Concealing something which she ought to know,” he murmured. “Great God! if she only knew, if she only knew. If I dared tell her would the telling bring me peace? Would it bring me a sweet dreamless sleep, such as I have not known in fifteen years? Christ! Fifteen eternities have I lived in these years, but if I tell her I shall loose her, and ah, more bitter still, I shall loose my sunbeam, my little Mary. No, no, I can not, dare not tell her. She is beginning to love me. In time she will forgethimand then, ah, what bliss will be mine when I shall hear her say ‘I love thee better than ever I loved thy brother.’ I scoff at religion in her presence, and pretend that I think there is no God, but merciful Father! do I not know that some day I shall be called to account for my crimes? That there is no hope for me in this world nor the next? Then, how dare I bend my knee in reverence and piety, when nothing but evil thoughts throng my brain?”
At this moment the door quietly opened and the roguish face of a child of six years peeped slyly in.Her laughing eyes grew serious as she heard the sobs of her father. She held a hideous rag doll in her arms, and as she stole on tip toe into the room, she placed one chubby finger on the slit where the doll’s mouth was supposed to be and whispered: “Don’t dare to breathe, Dinah. Don’t make the weentiest bit of noise, for poor papa has one of his bad, nasty headaches, and you will be sent from the room in disgrace. Now mind.” The child gravely put her hand upon her father’s knee, and as he gave a guilty start, she asked: “Is it very, very bad, dear papa? Can your comfort charm it away?”
Andrew snatched the child to his breast, and covered her face with kisses. This little one was the only being in all the great world to whom he dare show his heart. He nestled his face in the thick flaxen curls on his darling’s head. He was called a hard man by his fellow men. His servants knew him only as a relentless taskmaster, whose lightest word must be obeyed, but the child in his arms had never heard one harsh word from him, or seen other than a loving smile on her father’s face when in his presence; and she gave him love for love. She passionately adored the stern, gloomy-faced man, whose heart opened at her bidding as a flower opens to the sun. “I told Dinah you was sick, and so she mustn’t talk,” said the child, patting her father’s cheek, “and I think she deserves a merit card for her good behavior. She hasn’t said a word.”
The father started, and looked around the room, expecting to see a third person, but seeing nobody, he said: “And who may Dinah be, my angel?”
Mary raised the dilapidated doll. “Just as if you didn’t know, Papa Willing, when you have kissed my ownest own Dinah lots of times. There, there, don’t cry, baby, because papa has forgotten you. We shall not love him any more.” Mary soothed the imaginary crying baby so tenderly, and with so sweet an air of gravity, much like Victoria when soothing Mary’s childish grief, that Andrew laughed in spite of his gloomy thoughts, and caught Mary’s face between his hands. “You are a little witch,” he said, kissing the roguish face. “You are putting on all that love. Dinah is only a bundle of rags. You don’t love her.”
“I truly do,” replied Mary, clasping Dinah closer. “I love her best of all my children. She issosweet.”
“She must be,” laughed Andrew. “Why she is simply disreputable. Where is the handsome Paris doll I gave you only last week?”
“Shut up in the clothes press. She put on airs before Dinah, just because she had real eyes and hair. I could not have that, you know, so into the clothes press she went, and she don’t come out until she begs Dinah’s pardon.”
“And where is Miss Flora McFlimsey, who has been the reigning favorite for quite a while?” asked Andrew, amused at the prattle of his innocent child.
“Oh, I drowned her in the lake this morning. Tied a couple of stones to her legs, and then threw her in; and oh, papa, she sunk beautiful, and the cunningest little whirlpool came up where she dropped in.”
“Horrors!” ejaculated Andrew in feigned amazement. “What a blood-thirsty little girl you are! Why, if I am permitted to ask, did you kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her, papa, only just drowned her. I know the very spot. Dan can wade out and get her any time. I mean she shall stay there until she becomes a better child. She hooked all the raspberry jam from the preserve-closet, this morning.”
“You don’t tell me,” said Andrew, seriously. “How did you discover that it was she?”
“Her face was covered with it, just actually ‘smeared’ as mamma says.”
“Was there any jam on your face, chickie?”
Mary looked up and caught the twinkle in her father’s eye.
“Only just a little, where I happened to kiss Flora before she was washed.”
“Oh, you are a sham,” laughed Andrew, hugging the little maid close to his heart. “Have you told mamma about the jam?”
“Not yet, papa. I heard the groom telling the stable boy yesterday, ‘never to do anything to-day that he could put off till to-morrow,’ so I think I’ll not tell mamma till to-morrow.”
“What a philosopher I have here,” said Andrew, drawing the flaxen curls through his fingers, “but did you not misunderstand Teddy? Did he not say: ‘Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day?’”
“He may have said that,” replied Mary, nodding her small head, “but I like the other way a heap better.”
“You are not alone, dear child,” said Andrew, a gloom settling upon his face again. “Most people like to transpose the good old adage. I among them,” he sighed.
Mary looked up quickly. She was quick to note these sudden changes in her father. “I love you, papa. I do love you, best of anybody in all this world.”
“Do you love me better than you love your mamma?” whispered Andrew longingly.
The child laid her cool cheek against the hot face of her father, and clasped him about the neck. “I love you first; then I love mamma; next I love Grandma Willing, who has gone to heaven, and then I love Dinah. Poor Dinah. Teddy threw her into a bucket of dirty water yesterday, and she doesn’t look very clean, and then the mean thing laughed, so he did.”
Oh, what sweet music was the prattle of this child to Andrew. Her baby love and caressing ways was all the heaven which he ever expected to enjoy. With his child in his arms he forgot for a time the sword of Damocles suspended by a hair, and which might fall at any moment and crush him. Few moments in Andrew Willing’s life could justly be called happy ones, but when he looked back over the sin-laden years, he did not regret what he had done, except that the knowledge of his sin being known might tear from him the only two beings whom he loved. He looked after Mary as she ran from the room hugging the beloved Dinah. “Proclaim my sin,” he murmured, “and by so doing become a jail-bird, shut away forever from my wife and child? Never! I may suffer all the tortures of the dammed, but I will still keep my secret. I must go more into society, or Victoria, with her keen intuition, will surely discover something, and I must also fill the house with guests. It will, perhaps, serve to drive these demons away which so harass me.”
He stepped out of the window, went down the veranda steps, and took the avenue leading to the lake. With bent head and eyes fixed moodily upon the ground, he walked along. He was envied by many people for his wide domains and apparent prosperity. Men who had met with adversity would turn to theirneighbors and say: “Talk of luck, why look at Andrew Willing. He is the luckiest dog going. Everything he touches turns to gold. His tobacco crops are always the finest. His negroes never sicken and die. Everything runs smoothly with him. Even his blind brother was conveniently killed in a railway accident, and Andrew profits again as usual by taking the fair widow along with the property.” But if these men could have looked deep into this wretched man’s heart; if they could have known the misery and tortures which every hour in the day he endured, then would their envy have been turned to pity, guilty though he might be. Andrew had been trying for ten years to stifle his conscience, which seemed to grow more active with advancing years, and would not be stilled. At the turn in the avenue he stopped, and looked back at the old gabled house in which he had spent so many happy hours; which also held the beings whom he adored, but alas, a home filled with grinning demons, whose devilish, hideous whisperings in his ears whenever he entered, were driving him to the verge of madness. He smote his breast remorsefully as his eyes wandered over the house, and rested for a moment on the highest gable which had once been the room of his father’s favorite slave, but whose stained glass windows had been boarded up for over thirty years. “Peace, peace!” he cried. “Will I ever know peace again until I have made reparation to those I have wronged? And when I have done so, what then? A felon’s cell or a suicide’s grave will be all I shall have to look forward to. Oh, God! I cannot. I cannot. Let fate do her worst. I will keep my secret.”
CHAPTER II.
Shortly after this everything about “The Gables” seemed to take on new life. Andrew had bade Victoria make ready and issue invitations for a grand fête, which should be given on a scale of magnificence never equalled, and which should hold a week. Victoria was thunderstruck. This indeed was a new departure for her husband, who had tabooed all society for nearly ten years, and who now chose to plunge headlong as it were into gayeties to which he was wholly a stranger. It is no wonder that she looked apprehensively at him, and wondered if he had not suddenly taken leave of his senses, but knowing his dislike to being questioned she merely asked: “How many invitations shall I issue, Andrew?”
“As many as the house will hold without crowding, Victoria. We can accommodate nearly a hundred who may come from a distance. The lodge will room twenty more. We can erect a temporary barracks for the men who come unaccompanied by ladies, so I think with the neighboring gentry who will, of course return home at night, you can get out three hundred invitations. I will get the necessary lumber and have the men begin erecting whatever is needful at once. Will this please you, my love?”
“It certainly ought to,” laughed Victoria. “Why, Andrew, the expense will be frightful.”
“It will not exceed ten thousand dollars, Victoria, and I shall never miss so small a sum. Even if it is twice that amount I shall not grumble. We have received many pressing invitations from friends. It is but courtesy on our part to return them. See that there is an abundance of everything, dear wife. There will be plenty of time to order anything you wish from New York. You have my consent to go in as deeply as you may desire.” And Victoria decided to obey her husband to the letter, and to make the fête one to be long remembered.
When it became known that “The Gables” was to be thrown open to the public, that everybody far and near had been invited by its master, the people could hardly believe the startling news. Very few had ever been inside the grand salon and reception-rooms, and those who had been so favored, had much to tell of their magnificence, and of the rare paintings and works of art with which the rooms were adorned. If Andrew was unpopular, Victoria was not, so there were very few regrets sent, and as the week approached, not a few anxious glances were cast at the threatening clouds which presaged bad weather; but the first day of the fête dawned cloudless, and before night every room in the spacious old house had been assigned to an occupant. Andrew laid aside his reserve, and proved himself to be a prince of entertainers. Victoria was amazed at this sudden transformation, and after seven years of married life saw her husband in an entirely different character, and also it was one which became him well. The first night was spent in all getting acquainted with one another, or in renewing old acquaintance, and in visiting the picture-gallery and other places of interest. The second day was to be devoted to the hunt. At night there was to be a hunt ball, and the grand ball-room was to be opened to the public for the first time in thirty-five years.
It was a merry party which assembled before the main entrance the morning of the hunt to say au revoir for a few hours to the hostess and those ladies who did not hunt. The gentlemen in their scarlet coats and buckskin breeches were bright bits of color among the more sombre riding-habits of the ladies, and Andrew, who sat his horse with a grace not equalled by any man present, noted the look of wifely pride on Victoria’s face, as she waved him an adieu with Mary perched upon her shoulder. The lady riding by his side saw the tender expression on his face as he kissed his fingers to Victoria, and as their horses cantered slowly down the avenue, she said: “You have a most charming wife, Mr. Willing, and the little one is simply cherubic.”
Andrew glanced at his companion. She was young and extremely beautiful. Rumor said that for three seasons she had been a reigning belle in New York and Baltimore society, and that, strange to relate, she caredmore for the society of middle-aged men than for that of men nearer her own age. Was she fishing for a compliment, thinking that Andrew, as scores of other men might have done, would at once begin a flirtation on the strength of the few words of praise bestowed upon his wife? All this flashed through Andrew’s mind as he watched the blooming color, like the heart of a sea shell, come and go on the riante face of his fair guest. His dark, mournful eyes, whose sadness was their greatest charm, looked straight into the melting blue ones so near him while he said: “There is no woman on this earth to equal her, Miss Marchon. There never will be for me. Without her and the child, who is a part of us, my life would become a void. I should not care to live.”
A slightly sarcastic smile curved the beautiful lips of his hearer. “Such devotion after nearly fifteen years of married life is truly commendable, Mr. Willing. So you never have desired to bask in the smiles of any other fair lady?”
Andrew saw the drift which the conversation was beginning to take. It was as he had thought. His beautiful guest was endeavoring to draw him into a perhaps harmless flirtation, but nevertheless, in his loyalty to Victoria, one which would be extremely distasteful to him. He resolved to at once nip this evident admiration of Miss Marchon for himself in the bud. He turned his horse and pointed with his whip to “The Gables,” which in the next turn of the avenue would be lost to their view. “That house holds all I care for in the world. No woman, not even if she possessed the wiles of a Cleopatra, could turn my allegiance from the angel we have left behind. Other women when compared with her seem soulless, dead, devoid of all those graces which she alone possesses. My God, how I love her! It is something more than love. It is adoration, worship, an unquenchable fire, which, when I hold her in my arms burns with a fever heat. Ah, Miss Marchon, few women are loved with the devotion which I give Victoria. When I say that to save her one heart pang I would die for her, they are not idle words. They come from a heart whose every drop of blood flows for her.”
He lowered his whip, and they rode on in silence. Andrew’s dreamy, melancholy eyes had no further charm for Miss Marchon. He could not be drawn into a flirtation,be it ever so mild, so, as they joined the rest of the party she gradually drew away from him, and attached herself to the side of the governor of the state, who was a widower, and a noted gallant. Her bright beauty soon captivated him, and before long she had given him her views of their host.
“He is a boor; a perfect numskull. He does not know enough to compliment any lady but his wife, and his ravings about her are ridiculous in the extreme.”
“Do you mean to say that he has been in your charming society for a whole hour; has looked into those glorious eyes; has gazed upon those tempting lips; and yet has been so ungallant as not to have seemed to appreciate so much loveliness, and his own good fortune in being near it?” inquired the governor, bending from his saddle to touch lightly with his gloved hand the damask cheek of his companion.
“Even so,” she replied, giving him a bewitching smile.
“Then he is indeed all that you have called him and a great deal more. He is wanting in courtesy, but then you must excuse him on the plea of his not having been in society of late. He has withdrawn from the world so completely since that dreadful accident to his brother, of which he was an eye-witness, and which for a time ’tis said unbalanced his mind so that he has acted strangely ever since. His wife was also his brother’s, you no doubt know?”
“No, indeed. This is news,” replied Miss Marchon, eagerly, woman-like, scenting a romance. “Do tell me all about it, dear governor. I know very little regarding them except what Mrs. Lewis, where I am visiting, has told me. She said that the Willings were people a little eccentric, but it would not do to slight them in any way, as they are immensely wealthy, and their ancestors were among the bluest blood of England’s peers, and that the present Mrs. Willing is a titled English lady, who dropped her title upon marrying an American.”
“All of which is very true,” rejoined the governor, “but what I shall tell you borders on the romantic. Roger and Andrew Willing were twin brothers, and as unlike as you can imagine. I knew them both from childhood. Roger was one of the finest fellows I ever knew. Jolly, full of jokes, and always ready for a goodtime. He had the handsomest blue eyes I ever saw, excepting, of course, these at my side.”
Miss Marchon was one of the few women who can blush conveniently and at just the right time. A delicious rosy wave of color dyed her cheeks, and she laughingly tapped her admirer with her whip. “Go on, go on, you flatterer,” she cried, “I am becoming deeply interested. I wish I might have known this Roger Willing whose picture you sketch so charmingly.”
“You can see his portrait in the large gallery, Miss Marchon, taken in the heyday of his youth, but it does not do him justice. Well, as I was saying, he was a fellow beloved by everybody, and was so different from his twin brother, who was always as you see him now; moody, quiet, and sadly wanting in gallantry toward the fair sex, and if I am not mistaken, a little jealous of his more popular brother. Then when Roger was in his twenty-second year, just when life looked the fairest to him, he lost his eyesight in a powder explosion during a Fourth of July celebration in New York.”
“How very sad!” exclaimed Miss Marchon. “Those beautiful eyes! It must have been a serious affliction to him.”
“It was; but he was a fellow who always looked on the bright side of everything, and you can imagine how surprised all society was, when it became known that only two months after his accident, he had been quietly married to Lady Victoria Vale, who was visiting his mother, and who had fallen violently in love with the invalid, and he with her.”
“Oh, how romantic!” cried Miss Marchon, clapping her hands. “Just like a novel. Pray, hasten, governor.”
“Yes, very romantic, but nevertheless a most unfortunate marriage. Lady Vale had higher views for her daughter, and was much displeased, so she left immediately for England, and never became reconciled even when her child was made a widow, and Rumor says she is not pleased with this second marriage, but I am digressing. It seemed as if nothing but ill-fortune followed this hasty bridal, for Andrew and his mother had some high words over a matter which no one has ever been able to discover, and the poor lady died that night in a paralytic fit.”
“How dreadful! Why, it seems almost like a fatality, does it not, governor?”
“Almost, Miss Marchon; but Lady Victoria’s troubles were not over by any means, for less than five years after her marriage, Roger was killed in a railway accident and brought home a shapeless bit of flesh, to be buried in the family plot beside his mother, whose favorite he had always been, and from whom he was not long separated.”
Here Miss Marchon brushed a few pearly tears—which had conveniently appeared just at the right moment—from her blue eyes. “It is so affecting,” she said in excuse, as the governor watched her admiringly.
“It only shows what a tender little heart it has,” he said, riding close to her, and softly brushing her eyes with his own daintily monogrammed cambric.
“Is there more?” she inquired, putting up her face in the most innocent manner, and squeezing out still another tear which was tenderly taken care of by the devoted governor.
“I wish there was more so that I might still perform this pleasant task,” he said, as he lingered long over the last tear, “but there is nothing of any interest except that Andrew profited much by his brother’s death, and not three years after, married the widow who had seemed inconsolable at first. She is certainly a most beautiful woman, but she is no longer in the full bloom of youth, and not to be compared with the charmer by my side in whom her husband can see no beauty.”
“Oh, you are a naughty man,” cried Miss Marchon, “you don’t mean a word you have said, and for punishment I shall ride on and join Miss Fairley, who has no companion.”
“Ah! do not be so cruel,” exclaimed the governor, catching her horse’s bridle. “The hunt will have no pleasures for me, if you desert me. Pray remove that glove that I may see your hand. Ah, it is still unfettered.” He caught the white hand and pressed it to his lips. “May I, dare I hope, that this little hand shall be mine for——”
Miss Marchon turned away her head, so that he should not see the smile of triumph on her lips. Here was a proposal worth accepting, but she would not make haste to jump at it too quickly. She must appear diffident, coy, and quite innocently maidenish, although she had passed the rubicon some time before and wasanything but an amateur in conducting love affairs to the desired point. His finishing words, however, brought her reverie to the ground with a thud, which she felt if no one else did, and she could have struck him in the face as he wound up with—“several dances at the ball to-night?”
For a moment she lost her head and came near bursting into tears. How glad she was that she had turned her head away. When shedidlook toward him her face was wreathed in smiles, and with a bewitching gesture, she replied: “As many dances as you wish dear governor. How can I refuse when asked in such a charming manner? But see, our party is already at the field. We are way in the rear. Come, let us hasten, or they will start without us.
And so ended the brief dream of Miss Marchon of some day becoming a governor’s lady, for he never proposed, but rode away when the fetê was ended, and she never saw him more.
Andrew opened the ball that night with Miss Marchon, and her unwilling ears were obliged to listen, while he berated the custom which tabooed him from dancing the first figure with his wife. Victoria, feeling happier than at any time since her marriage, was dancing with the governor, and as Andrew watched the face so dear to him, and noted every changing mood from grave to gay, from laughter to serious thought, he did not regret the step he had taken in throwing open his doors to this “howling mob,” as he called it, much as it was distasteful to him. He watched the governor as he bent in a most lover-like attitude over Victoria, and although he knew that Victoria was no flirt, yet the attention of any man toward his wife stirred something within him which if not exactly jealousy was very near akin to it. What man but himself had a right to clasp that slender waist, or press the exquisite figure of his loved one, perhaps with more tenderness than was at all necessary. He could hardly wait for the figure to be ended, so eager was he to join his wife, and with scarcely a word he led Miss Marchon to a seat, and crossed the room to where Victoria sat surrounded by a crowd of gallants.
She looked up with a bright smile as Andrew approached. “How charmingly Miss Marchon and youdance together,” she said, as he bent over her. “Is she not royally beautiful? I call her the most beautiful and the best dressed lady here.”
“I had not thought of her beauty,” replied Andrew, glancing at the sweet, serious face of Victoria, “and as for her costume I cannot tell you whether it be black or white. All women look alike to me save one, Victoria. That one I have deified. She stands a queen among her lesser satellites, and overshadows them all.”
Victoria looked up into her husband’s face. His eyes were full of slumbering passion, ready to burst into flame at a kind word from her. The other men had left them alone as Andrew began speaking to his wife, and somehow, as Victoria caught the fire in her husband’s eyes, something which she had not felt before stirred within her. A tremor, delicious in its vagueness, shot through her veins, and she thought: “Can this be love which I feel coming to me? Love for a man whom I have said I hated?” She laid her fan upon his arm. “How much you do love me, Andrew? I wonder if there be another man in this ball-room who is saying such devoted words to his wife as I am hearing?”
“No,” replied Andrew, “for no man loves his wife with the strength of passion which you inspire in me. Plenty are devoting themselves to the entertainment of other men’s wives, leaving their own neglected, or to be led into a flirtation which belittles them in the eyes of serious people. The men are vain and careless of the reputation of those who should be the most cherished by them. The women are silly and frivolous, and so the world moves on, and this reminds me that I have a request to ask of you, my darling. Will you dance with nobody but me to-night? I do not care for any partner but your sweet self, and you may deem me very silly, but I cannot see you in the arms of any one of these men who are so inferior to you, without a jealous pang.”
Victoria laughed. “What an idea, Andrew. Would you monopolize your wife at your own ball? What will people say?”
“I don’t give a continental for what people may say. I want you for myself. What is your decision, sweetheart?”
“Of course I will do as you wish, Andrew. I don’tcare to dance a very great deal. What I have promised I can no doubt get excused from.”
“Then do. Are you promised for the next? Yes, I see you are. I will at once seek your partner and get a substitute in your place. Then I shall claim my rights. Do you know, sweet wife, that this will be our first dance together? Can you imagine how eager I am to try my step with yours?”
He pressed her hand to his lips and left her. She watched him treading his way among the crowd. Surely she had every reason to be proud of him, and she ought to love him. Such devotion was certainly worthy of a return. Then she thought of that other husband, asleep under the freshly cut flowers which Mary and herself had strewn upon his bed that morning. Every morning ere the sun was up she took Mary, and together they walked to the pines where Roger lay, and laid their tribute of affection over the quiet sleeper. Andrew knew of these early visits but he never objected as any other man might have done under the circumstances, and as she sat there thinking of his careful tenderness for her and their child; of his patient love which had grown instead of diminished during nearly eight years of married life; how he had bourne without any outward signs of how it hurt him, her days of lamentations for Roger, when she had shut her door against everybody including her beloved child, and refused to be comforted. As she thought of all these things she saw her selfishness in many ways, and she resolved to gradually drop those early visits, and by so doing remove one thorn from Andrew’s path, for it had been a thorn to him she well knew. This morbid love of hers for the dead who could never return. She welcomed him with a smile when he returned, and he saw that in her face which was new to him. He looked at her searchingly.
“Have you been communing with unseen spirits, Victoria?” he said, as he led her upon the floor, “your face is angelic.”
“Yes,” she replied, looking up to him with a strange light in her eyes. “I have seen a vision which I never expected to behold. A vision of love in which only you and I, and our child were the central figures.”
He understood, and for a moment, strong man that hewas, he reeled under the exquisite meaning conveyed in her words. She was beginning to love him. She had put Roger away out of her thoughts. He placed his arm about her to begin the figure, and he pressed her to him with such passion as to crush the flowers at her bodice. “Don’t, Andrew,” she whispered, “you hurt me; besides, people about us are remarking your actions.”
“The whole world may see and comment,” he replied, as he strained her to him again. “I could shout it out from the house tops, I am so happy. I feel as if I were drunk, Victoria. Drunk with joy. Have I not waited for eight long weary years to hear the blessed words? Ah, if I had you alone, away from this gaping crowd, I would kneel before you and worship you as a divinity. My God! was ever woman so sweet as you? Was ever man so blessed as I? Will this ball ever come to an end?”
Indeed, Andrew in his ecstatic state of mind was nearer being a madman than a rational creature, and seemed to have thrown aside melancholy, and he entered into the sports of the ball with a zest equal to the youngest gallant there. Not until the revel was over, and he had sought his study for a few moments before retiring, as was his custom no matter how late the hour, did he remember the sword suspended by a single hair. Ah, yes, now it came back to him with cruel force after the sweet assurance held out to him by Victoria. With a maddening rush, all the simple events of the past ten years crowded upon his brain in a seething whirlpool, and beating his breast with his clenched hands, the strong man fell upon his knees, and for the first time in his life prayed God to forgive him his sins while he wept like a child. Ah, he was not without a conscience, which goaded and pricked him sharply. He had no need to wear a garment of hair next his flesh to remind him of a sin for which to do penance, and now—now that he knew Victoria was his; that in time she would give to him the sweet love for which he so craved, his sins looked more heinous than ever, yet he could not bring himself to confess them, for fear of losing both Victoria and his child; and he seemed to see written in letters of fire upon the study wall the words: “Be sure in time your sins will be discovered. Repent then, and confess.”
“I cannot! I cannot!” cried the miserable man, in answer to those unspoken words, yet which were visible tohiseye. “If my soul goes to torment I cannot confess. God help me!”
CHAPTER III.
The week of the fête ended as it had begun, with sunshine and cloudless skies. It had been pronounced simply perfect by everybody, who upon leaving, congratulated their host and hostess upon the successful termination of their more than delightful fête. Among themselves opinions were exchanged regarding the master and mistress of “the Five Gables.” All agreed that Mrs. Willing had proved a charming hostess, with whom the most exacting could not find a grain of fault, but that Mr. Willing, although courtly in manner and very agreeable, was absurdly in love with his wife, so much so as to appear ridiculous in the eyes of his female visitors, who could have forgiven any other fault in their host more willingly, than this very unfashionable one of showing a preference for his own wife while other ladies were by.
Meanwhile affairs at “the Five Gables” resumed the even tenor of their way, which had been disturbed by the events of the past week. Andrew sunk into a chair as the last guest disappeared, and with a huge sigh of relief, took Mary upon his knee, who loudly wailed at seeing all her little playmates depart, and would not be comforted.
“Hush, hush, my darling,” said Andrew, kissing the great tears coursing down the cheeks of the child. “Papa will get you anything you wish, only cease this crying, you will make yourself ill.”
“But—but I—but I want Lilian to return,” sobbed Mary. “She’s a dear, and—and I love her, if shedidstick pins into poor Dinah and call her a fright; and—and she has—she has such lovely long hair which I can pull when I get real mad at her.”
“Ah!” laughed Andrew, “there is method in this violent grief. You have not been so unladylike as to pull Miss Lilian’s hair, I hope?”
“Oh, heaps of times, papa. She liked it.”
“No doubt,” again laughed Andrew. “It must be anexquisite sensation. What did Miss Lilian do while you were pulling her hair?”
“She bit me, here and here.” Mary displayed two red marks, evidently made by four very sharp teeth.
“Upon my soul, chickie, your love-making was of a very tender nature. You pull her hair; she bites you, and still you lament her departure and wish her to return.”
“Of course,” replied Mary, sententiously.
“Why of course?” asked her father.
“Because of course I love her. She is the dearest girl I know. She hugs just be-yew-tiful.”
Victoria came in at this moment and Andrew drew her to him. “I am glad we are alone once more,” he said. “One such kick-up will do for a life time.”
“But it has been very enjoyable, Andrew. Everybody has gone away delighted. I have heard so many pleasant things said about you, and it has made me glad. I feel very proud of my noble husband.”
She placed her hand upon his head. He caught it and carried it to his lips. “I am rewarded,” he said, looking lovingly into her eyes. “I would do it all over again to hear such sweet words from the lips I adore.”
“But there is something I wish to ask you, Andrew. Run away to Chloe, my darling,” she continued, stooping to kiss Mary, “mamma wishes to be alone with papa.”
As Mary left the room she turned again to Andrew, a slight shade of annoyance on her face. “Is there a room in this house which I know nothing of, Andrew? A room in the western gable which I have always supposed was false?”
Andrew’s face became ashen pale. His eyes sought the floor. He dared not look at Victoria. Wild thoughts flashed through his brain. Who had told her? How much did she know? With an effort he mastered his emotions, but he kept his eyes upon the floor. “Who has been filling you with silly tales, Victoria?”
“Mrs. Bradley said——”
“Ah! that busybody,” exclaimed Andrew, tersely.
“Yes, Andrew, she seems to know more of the family history than your own wife. She, with some other ladies and myself, was standing in the west gallery this morning, when she said: ‘Mrs. Willing, there is one roomyou have not shown us, and I, for one, am dying to see it. I have often heard my father tell of its many lovely curios brought from foreign lands, and its beautiful occupant long since dead. He was a boon companion of your husband’s father.’”
“I told Mrs. Bradley that I had no knowledge of any such room and that she must have been misinformed.”
“Oh, no indeed,” she replied. “It is in the western gable, and should lead right out from this gallery.”
“Now I know you are mistaken,” I answered. “That gable is false. There is no room such as you mention in the gable. Do you not see the solid wall all along this gallery? and the gable lies directly back of it.”
“She smiled incredulously and looked at the other ladies as much as to say: ‘She can tell us, but she won’t.’ I led the way from the gallery, and the subject was dropped; but I have come to you for information, Andrew. If there is any mystery about that gable you must know it, and I should hear from your lips instead of from those of a gossip.”
As Victoria spoke Andrew’s face underwent a gradual change, and as she finished he gravely took her on his knee. “Mrs. Bradley has laid bare our family skeleton,” he said. “It is not pleasant to relate, but now that a busybody has partly enlightened you, it is well that you should know the truth instead of perhaps receiving a garbled account of it from a stranger. You have been told that my father died from an accidental pistol shot. So I was led to believe until my twenty-first year. Roger believed the same; then our mother told us of the gabled room, the knowledge of which was as much a surprise to us as it is now to you. We had always believed the gable to be false. My father when a young man, had fitted up in a most lavish style the western gable, making two elegant rooms of it, filling them with all the rare things which he could gather. Here he installed his favorite slave girl. After a time he went to England and married my mother. The very night of their return while he was showing my mother the house, as they went to ascend the stairs leading to the gabled room, his slave girl, smarting from her fancied wrongs, barred their progress and asked for freedom papers for herself and child. My father refused her, and straightway she shot him and then herself.Shortly after this Roger and I were born. My mother never spoke of her sorrow to anybody, but ordered every trace of the tragedy to be obliterated. No person ever entered the rooms after that except to board the windows. Everything was left as its unhappy occupant had stepped from it. The stairs were taken down and a solid wall built. My mother never spoke of it but once on our twenty-first birthday. Never again did I hear her allude to it in the faintest manner. That is the story, Victoria. Do you wonder at my silence regarding it? Is it a topic to be dwelt upon? A father’s shame and dishonor; a mother’s blighted life?”
“No, no, my husband. I would never have asked you to tell it had I known. Forgive me for unwittingly being the one to rake up these dead ashes of a buried past.”
“There is nothing to forgive, dear wife. I think I feel better for the telling. Mrs. Bradley knows not as much as I have told you, for my mother succeeded in keeping the real facts to herself. The servants were all freed and given money enough to go far away, so there was no babbling. It was given out as an accident and so believed by most.”
“What became of the child?” asked Victoria.
“That went with the rest. An old aunty and her husband, who were going to Raleigh to find their children who had been sold away from them, took the boy with them. We have never heard from them since. My mother gave them plenty of money and promised to send them more if they needed it, but they never applied for more. No doubt they are dead.”
“No doubt,” replied Victoria, looking dreamily out over the fair lands of which her husband was the sole possessor, “but I have a feeling, a presentiment, that some day you will hear from this Ishmael who really ought to receive some share of what was his father’s.”
Andrew smiled. “Don’t let any such foolish fancies linger in your mind, dear wife. The laws of Virginia were made for just such cases as his. He could not claim so much as a stone from off this plantation.”
“But, Andrew, laying all race prejudice aside, and speaking from your heart, tell me honestly, would you not feel guilty of keeping all? Is not a share of it your brother’s?”
“Never,” spoke Andrew decidedly. “Victoria, you are a queen among women. You are more intelligent than any woman I know, but on such questions allow me to be the judge. You certainly are not capable.”
He arose and paced the room excitedly. “There is one person whose society I wish you to avoid Victoria, and that is Mrs. Bradley. When she calls here again treat her very ceremoniously, and please do not return her call. That woman gives me a creeping sensation whenever she come near me. She is a human snake. Leave her entirely alone, I beg of you. But for her this disagreeable conversation would not have occurred. Unpleasant things like thesemustnot come up between us, my wife. They are sure to leave thoughts in the mind which cannot easily be forgotten. Am I right?” He stooped and kissed her.
“Yes, Andrew, you are always right. I will drop Mrs. Bradley from my calling-list, and you shall never hear me speak again of this skeleton in your family closet unless you first mention it. Will my doing so please you?”
“Most certainly, Victoria. We have never had a word of disagreement since our marriage. Do not let us begin now.”
So the subject from that day was not again referred to by either Victoria or Andrew, but it cannot be said that neither thought of it afterward, for Victoria, although she had none but loyal thoughts for her husband, could not help her mind occasionally turning toward that mysterious western gable, in which were the beautifully decorated rooms which must now be in a state of utter decay after having been closed for so many years. Victoria was not without her full share of curiosity, and she often longed to speak with Andrew, and implore him to find some way of opening a passage to the western gable, so that they might visit those rooms and gaze upon the treasures supposed to be still there. Of course it was a sad story, but then nearly every old family had a skeleton of some kind in their closets, and now that the principal actors in this tragedy were long since mouldered into dust, what harm could be done by opening the rooms and making use of what must be the pleasantest gable of all the five. She resolved,when the proper time should present itself, to broach the subject to Andrew. He could only refuse.
After this conversation Andrew spent more of his time than he had ever done in his study. After breakfast he would repair to his study and give orders that he was not to be disturbed by anybody unless he himself should signify to the contrary, and often Victoria did not see him again until the luncheon hour. Then for a few hours, usually until dinner, he rode or drove with herself and Mary, and seemed for the time being to throw off the melancholy which was becoming more noticeable every day, and which Victoria gazed upon with alarm. Then shortly after dinner, when Victoria would have prized his society the most, he again repaired to his study, there to remain until the wee small hours, and it had become a regular nightly habit for him to have a repast served to him usually at midnight. Victoria had remonstrated with him until she had become weary. She told him that his health could not always remain perfect when subjected to such a strain; that he was growing aged far beyond his years; but he only laughed, and stopped her mouth with a kiss, and continued as before to immure himself within his den where Mary alone was admitted, and she not at all times, for she often knocked and even kicked at the closed door, and could get not so much as a word from her father who, when she told him hours after, would reply: “Papa cannot talk when he is writing or very busy, chickie.”
“But you might just come to the door,” persisted the child, “and say, ‘Go away, Mary, papa can’t see you just yet,’ and not keep me banging at the door so long. I’ve listened at the keyhole many a time, and it’s so awfully still it makes me afraid.”
And at such times Andrew would take Mary on his knee, and bury his troubled face in the child’s clustering curls. The anguish of his heart was plainly visible in his manner, but only his God and Mary was there to witness it, and although the child knew that there was something amiss, her childish mind could not fathom it. She only knew that her father was troubled, and in her baby fashion she comforted him, calling him “poor papa,” and smoothing the heavy lines of care upon his forehead with soft, caressing fingers, which were as an angel’s to Andrew’s fevered, throbbing temples. Tohim this child seemed nothing less than a celestial being, lent to him by a merciful God for a time, to sooth his tired frame, and who might be snatched from him in the twinkling of an eye; and he clasped his treasure to him with a passion born of his morbid fears, until the child begged to be released.
As the days grew into months Andrew’s strange melancholy increased, as also his fancy that Mary must never be from his sight unless she were asleep, until Victoria feared for his reason. To her his behavior was as a tangled skein, of which she could find no end whereby she might begin to unravel. To all her questions his invariable reply was that he felt in the best of health; that his affairs in business were most satisfactory, and with this she was obliged to content herself, although it by no means reassured her. And too, his growing watchfulness over Mary alarmed Victoria. He demanded that her crib be placed closed beside his bed, and when Victoria surprised at the request asked the reason, he replied that of late he had been troubled with strange dreams, and that he thought he might rest better if he could awaken and lay his hand upon his child. So to humor him, Victoria had Mary’s little bed removed from her room to that adjoining, and many nights after that when Andrew came from his study, he would bend over the sweet sleeper, touching softly the dainty cheek, or raising a tiny hand kiss each finger passionately, while tears which he did not strive to check, fell upon the innocent being whom he had sinned against beyond pardon, yet whom he loved as few children are beloved by their parents.